Funday Sunday!

Hi Everyone!
It's Kristin here, guest blogging for Kathie who is diligently working on her presentation for tomorrow. So far, so good!

Today was a busy day. We woke up early and got some serious breakfast that pretty much sat in our bellies until dinner time. It was such a busy day that we would not have had time to eat anyways, but no complaints!

This weekend for me has been really fun because it has been a great chance to refresh and revitalize my own art education practice, and I was able to meet some of my most favorite art education thinkers. It is really exciting to be with so many people with similar research interests. This is not your typical conference. Everything here is in Technicolor, right down to the lanyards we wear with our name tags. Color makes you happy, so how could you not be happy here?!

I started off the day with Corrie to see Karen Kiefer-Boyd and Debi Smith-Shank talk about wrinkles...making wrinkles in research, wrinkles in aging and disrupting the expected norm through a feminist perspective. They talked about visual representation of women and aging, and how to disrupt this thinking. Long story short, it was really great. Seeing them really has recharged me to get back to my writing. Thank god!

We then went to a workshop on job-hunting, which was really informative. Then we went to the vendor's fair to collect some serious swag. Kathie, Corrie and I really took our swag collecting to a new level! Tons of cool stuff, and lots of cool materials to possibly use in classes. I recommend that all art ed students should go to the conference as soon as possible. It is chalk-full of opportunities.

Overall, it was an awesome weekend. I am fairly exhausted, as is everyone else, but I feel refreshed spiritually and academically and ready to go! This was my first conference, and I can't believe I waited this long to go.

I will leave you with my Top 5 experiences:
1. People watching! Too awesome.
2. Oliva Gude's presentation on re-thinking boring curriculum. So essential.
3. Debi Smith Shank and Karen Kiefer Boyd's Visual Culture and Gender presentation.
4. Presenting on Friday was really exciting.
5. Getting to share the experiences with art ed friends from past and present, from Syracuse University to Columbia University, was invaluable.

Toodles, and see y'all back in Syracuse!
kristin:)